Читать книгу Salvation Story - David R. Froemming - Страница 8

1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. 6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

Isaiah portrays unlikely pairs of animals for his human listeners to copy, thus resolving the crisis of rivalry that is caused by their being too much alike. By doing so, Isaiah is keeping the state of humility for people, depicting animals as the role model for peaceful living! It is the Spirit of the Lord’s wisdom, not mere human appearances, that this peaceful co-existing order is held together. Here social justice toward the poor is practiced. The blindness of human sight and the deafness of human hearing will not deter this one who is led by the Lord’s Spirit of wisdom. And Isaiah ends with an integral vision of all the earth being full of the knowledge of the Lord.

This is the wisdom of the Lord spoken through the prophet Isaiah. It is part of the story that comes to save us from the self-destruction we are trapped in as humans.